TERRAFORMING TERRA
We discuss and comment on the role agriculture will play in the containment of the CO2 problem and address protocols for terraforming the planet Earth.
A model farm template is imagined as the central methodology. A broad range of timely science news and other topics of interest are commented on.

Thursday, September 6, 2012

Swamp Ape or Swamp Sloth?

These reports from Illinois are thirty years old but they are also
important. Now that we know that we are looking for the giant sloth,
these old reports are invaluable.

1 The creature is as large as a Bigfoot and it does use bipedal
motion very successfully. This was unexpected but should not have
been.

2 Way more important, it is not a Bigfoot. Witnesses were too close
to not recognize it as a primate or not. What they saw was a hairy
monster that they could not recognize. This means rather obviously
that it was not a bear either.

3 The footprint is suitable for bipedal movement and this is a
surprise. I expected something akin to a bear, except a bear does a
lousy job of walking on two legs because of the limitations of its
feet. The foot print is narrow without a thumb. This conforms well
to a foot able to grasp a tree limb.

4 There are real claws as we know occur on the Giant Sloth.

5 A severe odor is noted although not described. I expect rotten
meat for the Sloth and old fecal material for the Sasquatch and
perhaps both for the Sloth.

6 Unlike the Sasquatch, it is not nearly so shy. It deliberately
confronted folks in cars likely in its space and bathed in daylight.
We already knew this aggressiveness from other reports. The problem
is that this creature is a predator. I wonder if much of the sheep
meat was actually eaten at all. More likely it had left the corpses
to become fly blown before it returned to cache the bodies of its
victims.

As you can see from this that there were plenty of witnesses who all
had the general good sense to get away.

Again the original reports did not recognize the giant sloth and I
expect to see more of that as these tales are winkled out. We now
have several separate incidents and the number will steadily climb
because we now know what to look for. Some Bigfoot reports will turn
out to be better explained as a giant sloth.

The second report is of a large number of frightened individuals
attempting to confront another one of these creatures. I regret that
they failed to take pictures of the tracks, but the ground may well
have been too soft. However, I think that this informs us that the
Swamp Ape and the Giant sloth are one and the same.

It is important to know that this creature is aggressive and curious
and exceedingly dangerous. That individuals confronting this animal
slam into auto flight is telling. We do not do that when we confront
the sasquatch.

In the Spring 1970, three sheep had been killed near the town
of Farmer City, Illinois. Local officials dismissed it as the work of
wild dogs, which have been known to roam the area. In July just
outside of town, near Salt Creek, was a ten-acre section of woods and
fields that was a popular parking spot for teenagers. Four teens
parked at the popular “lover’s lane” area and received the
fright of their lives when a huge, hairy humanoid with piercingyellow
eyes decided to see what was going on in their car. After the
creature was “scared away” by a flashlight, the terrified girls
demanded to be taken home. The boys returned to investigate and again
encountered the creature; even with windows closed its stench
permeated the vehicle. They didn’t stick around. The boys led local
police to the area, but a search turned up only a much flattened
area of foliage - thought to be its “nest”.

During
the next two weeks, multiple sightings of the creature were
made around the area - including one sighting by Robert Hayslip, a
Farmer City police officer. A week after this sighting, the creature
was spotted 20 miles southwest in Weldon Springs State Park near
Clinton, IL - it was a bear 'bathing' in the river, but fled to dense
woods when it realized it was spotted. Later, a policeman and a
conservation officer found tracks along the water‘s edge that
definitely did not belong to a bear. They were reportedly very large
and human-like.

Days later the
creature migrated 15 miles north to Heyworth, IL where it was spotted
late at night crouching by the side of a county back road - it jumped
and fled when the car slowed to observe it. The startled observer
described it as “ape-like”.

Still
seemingly on the move, the beast was, 10 days later witnessed by a
team of construction workers outside of Waynesville, IL (10 miles
west of Heyworth). It sprinted across the road (from woods to woods)
in front of their van near dusk. Another Waynesville resident
reported seeing it too within days. That was the last report of the
so-called "Farmer City Monster" and one can’t help but
wonder if it continued its strange journey northwest across Central
Illinois. If it did, it was never reported again.

-----

Friday,
July 17, 1970

Farmer City
'Monster" Sparks Search, Debate

By James
Keeran

Bloomington
Pantagraph

Farmer City -
Believe it or don't, but a lot of people think there's something that
might be a monster of some sort running about the Salt Creek area
south of here.

It all started
a week ago when four Farmer City youths set up camp on some land
owned by Kenny Johnson.

It was Thursday night, July 9, and
they were sitting by the campfire when they heard something move in
the tall grass surrounding the area. It spooked them.

One youth said
he saw something move between the grass and the tent. Somebody turned
the car lights on to get a better look.

It was
crouched down by the tent. It looked manlike and was covered with a
grayish white fur. Then it ran away. . . on two feet.

Stood Above
Grass

Another youth
said it stood between two and three feet above the grass. The grass
is between three and four feet high in that area.

And it runs fast. The campers, Don Ennis, Larry
Faircloth, Bob Hardwick and Gale Baker, left the area
posthaste.

Young Ennis, with one foot in a cast because
of a broken ankle, even left his crutches behind.

They told
their story to Farmer City Policeman Robert Hayslip. He investigated
and saw nothing.

But, he did hear something "running
through the grass."

Friday
night between 10 - 15 people say they saw a pair of eyes
glowing at them in the dark.

Sunday night
three more people swear they saw a furry creature again, in the same
area.

More Saw Beast

Tuesday night
eight to 10 people saw it standing by a dead tree about 100 feet away
from the original campsite. When they shined car lights on it, it ran
into the tall grass.

Bob Tharp was
one who saw it.

"I didn't
think it was as tall as they said it was," he said. "It
looked to be maybe three or four feet high."

He called it
"just a grayish figure."

Early Tuesday
morning, between 2 and 3 o'clock, Officer Hayslip returned to the
campsite with a friend.

Nobody knew the two men were going.
The area seemed deserted.

"Heard
Something Running"

"About 2
or 2:30 I heard something running through the grass," said
Hayslip. "I thought once I might have see a pair of eyes pop
up."

When he left
the area about 3 a.m., a tent was still standing.

Somebody else
checked the area about 6 a.m. Tuesday and found tent in shreds about
20 feet from where it had been pitched. Steel grommets, set in the
heavy canvas tent, had been "ripped out," said the
officer.

A quilt left near the tent also had been ripped to
shreds.

Young
Tharp and a friend took a tour of the 10-acre area on a
motorcycle Tuesday. They found several paths and the grass
around several trees had been matted down "like something slept
there," he said.

Questions
Persist

End of story?
Not quite.

Unanswered
questions persist.

Why would a
wild animal, against it nature, approach human beings and then run
away?

What kind of
animal runs in an upright position?

How can it run
fast through thick grass three and four feet high?

What is strong
enough to tear steel grommets from heavy canvas?

Who or what is
it?

Maybe
it's somebody who just gave up smoking, can't sleep and
doesn't have anything else to do at night.

Nobody, really
knows what it is, but it's beginning to cause a lot of talk around
town. And it's definitely keeping a lot of teenager off the streets
at night.

They're all
out looking for the creature.

-----

Wednesday,
March 30, 1977

Spring
resurrects ‘Kickapoo Monster’

By Rick Baker

Bloomington
Pantagraph

Downs – “You
didn’t really see that thing, did you, Dale Mitchell?”

“Yes, I
did,” Dale Mitchell said earnestly.

“Aw, come
on.”

“I saw it,”
Dale Mitchell said.

Dale Mitchell,
a 23 year old mechanic from Downs, said he saw, and was pursued by,
something about seven feet tall and “covered with fur” late
Monday night about two miles north of Downs.

Mitchell
said he was driving to his home in Downs from his job in
Wapella, when the headlights of his pickup truck shone on what he
said looked like “a bigfoot monster.”

“Aw, come
on.”

“I saw it.”
Dale Mitchell said.

Mitchell said
he saw the thing near a bend in Kickapoo Creek, and when he saw it,
he said he stopped his truck on a rural road to look at the thing. He
said that when he stopped, the thing started rushing toward him.

Mitchell took
off. He said he didn’t get a very good look at the thing, but said
it “had a kind of human face and hands.” Mitchell said he
nervously drove home and, as many people who have seen monsters do,
call The Daily Pantagraph.

Since 1970,
there were several reports of a “bigfoot monster” in Tazewell
County near the Coal Hollow Road. A lot of people got pretty riled up
over those monster sightings.

About 75 men
in Tazewell County formed a posse, equipped with guns and flashlights
to find the monster. The monster wasn’t found and the posse broke
up shortly after one of the searchers, an East Peoria man, accidently
shot himself in the leg.

Some members
of the posse figured the monster went back home in outer space.

And
in 1973, the United Press International was moving quite a few
stories about monster sightings near the small town
of Enfield, in Southern Illinois.

Henry
McDaniel, a disabled war veteran from Enfield, told UPI that he
heard something scratching on the rear door of his house in the
spring of 1973. He said he went to the door and saw a gray, hairy,
three-legged monster standing like a human being with pink reflecting
eyes bulging from a huge head. (Holy Moses)

“I wasn’t
scared.” McDaniel told UPI. He went back into his house and got a
gun. Then he shot it four times. He said the monster hissed, leaped
75 feet in three jumps, and disappeared.

The monster
story got national attention. When a man in Elyria, Ohio, read it, he
recognized the description. It was his pet kangaroo that had escaped.
Its tail looked kind of like a third leg. The most reports of a
monster in any one place in the area came from Farmer City in July of
1970. Within a week about 30 people reported seeing a “manlike
thing” covered with grayish-white fur near a rural campsite.

Four
young men camping at the site said they saw it and manged to get a
set of car lights on it before it ran away. Soon after the thing ran
away, they ran away. One of the young men had his broken foot set in
a cast. He ran off without his crutches. They reported the sighting
to police.

A couple of
nights late, about a dozen people said they saw “a thing’s”
eyes glowing at them in the dark. A few nights after that, three
people swore to police they saw the furry creature again.

And a couple
of nights after that, about 10 people told police they saw the thing
standing by a dead tree about 100 feet away from the campsite.

Farmer City
police officer Robert Hayslip, after getting all the reports, went to
the campsite one morning about 2 o’clock. Hayslip said he heard
something running through tall grass, but didn’t see
anything.

When Hayslip left, there was a tent standing at the
camping area. Four hours later, the tent was found ripped to shreds.

And it hasn’t
been heard from in the Farmer City area since.

A couple of
weeks after the Farmer City sightings, several youths said they saw a
similar creature on the Kickapoo near Heyworth.

“I really
saw it,” Mitchell said Tuesday. “I got pretty shook up.”

NOTE: There
have been many similar sightings in the same general area over the
years, including a reported 'Class A' sighting in 2009 and
more recent sightings in Chatham in the Summer of 2011 (posted
below)...Lon

-----

July 18, 2011

Strange
Howling, Footprints and Other Evidence Reported In Central Illinois

There’s
something amiss in the backwoods of Chatham, something potentially
big. Lately there’s been talk around certain areas of town of an
unusual howling and screeching sound as well as evidence of some very
large footprints.

Since June
there have been at least five to six instances of residents
discovering or hearing evidence that the infamous Bigfoot may be
lurking somewhere in the Chatham community. One case in particular
has garnered some attention from local police, as well as a few
proclaimed Big Foot experts.

On Wednesday, June 15, 2011,
Michael Patrick’s mother was getting the liner to her pool changed
at her residence, when workmen noticed an abnormally large footprint
under the apple tree in the back yard and brought the footprint to
Patrick’s attention.

Over the years
Patrick and his mother had, at times, heard bizarre noises, but had
always passed them off as coming from some common forest animal. But
they weren’t the only ones that had heard the sounds either. The
night before the footprint was found a neighbor had also commented
about unusual sounds.

“My neighbor has a German Shepherd,
and it heard something that night that spooked him. The dog went
outside to investigate, but came back cowering, now it won’t leave
its owner’s side,” Patrick said.

Unsure about
what exactly the footprint was, and concerned for his mother’s
safety, Patrick called the Chatham Police Department. An officer came
to investigate the scene, but was unable to determine what might have
caused the print.

“The
responding officer stated that there was a large footprint
approximately 18 inches long and 8 inches wide, and it appeared there
were five claw marks,” Chatham Police Department Deputy Chief,
Vernon Foli said.

To give you an
idea how big 18 inches is, retired NBA center Shaquille O’Neil's
feet are approximately 15 inches long, and he wears a size 23 shoe.
The average human being’s foot measures approximately 9 ½ inches.
Most shoe size charts end at a size fifteen shoe. An 18-inch
footprint is about the size of a healthy newborn baby. Considering
the size of the print, it’s understandable for a person to show a
little concern if they found such a print in their yard.

Patrick
documented his discovery on Facebook where he struck up a
conversation with a friend. Patrick’s friend knew John Winterbauer,
a Bigfoot investigator. Winterbauer in turn contacted local Bigfoot
expert Stan Courtney.

Courtney has
documented sightings and gathered sound recordings and evidence of
Bigfoot for years. He has interviewed over two hundred witnesses who
have seen Bigfoot.

“I literally
know hundreds of people who’ve seen these animals. There have been
lots of them in central Illinois. I’ve recorded lots of sounds that
other researchers and witnesses believe come from these animals.
People in Springfield don’t realize it, but there have been a lot
of reports from the Sangamon River around Riverton.” Courtney said
in a previous interview.

Courtney said that
there have been five to six other reports of finding footprints and
howling in the Chatham area since June.

So why is
Bigfoot in Chatham? Well it’s hard to say really. Patrick’s
property does back up to a wooded stream which flows into Lake
Springfield. Courtney proposed that the creature was drawn to the
house because of the apple tree that grows in Patrick’s mother’s
back yard.

Stan Courtney
explained to Patrick that the apple tree might have somehow been
interpreted as a gift of food. In the past the Patrick’s had
noticed that apples from the tree had been picked, but only to a
certain height. They believed that the culprit was a wily raccoon,
but the large footprint seemed to suggest otherwise. Courtney told
Patrick that a creature such a Bigfoot will usually return the favor,
and present a gift of its own as a show of appreciation in the form
of a dead animal or a strange arrangement of flowers.

The day after
his meeting with Courtney, Patrick discovered the Sasquatch’s gift,
a decapitated rabbit, near his mother’s house. In Courtney’s
account he stated that the rabbit had, “its head pulled off, not
bitten or cut, but just simply pulled off.”

Since that
strange June evening, no more incidents have occurred at Patrick’s
mother’s residence. You might think that such a strange series of
events would frighten most people in to staying out of the back yard,
but the occurrence has not deterred Patrick’s mother from going
about her normal routine.

“She’s not
scared, she continues to do her yard work, she thinks it’s neat. My
mom has never been skeptical of it.” Patrick said.

While his
mother may not be skeptical of what happened, others aren’t ready
to pin the event on Bigfoot just yet. Vernon Foli posed a possible
explanation, albeit an indirect one.

“One thing I can tell
you is that approximately ½ mile south of this location is the
former Grindstone Valley Zoo that use to have exotic animals. The zoo
is no longer in existence but the owner is Brad or Larry Reynolds and
he still has some animals at this location,” Foli said.

Could the
print have come from an animal from the old zoo? The Reynolds had
kept large animals such as buffalo, antelope, elk, deer, tigers,
leopards, monkeys, and zebras while the zoo was open. Or could it be
a bear footprint? It’s widely believed by many that there are no
bears in Illinois, but with their presence in neighboring states,
Wisconsin and Missouri, would it be so far fetched to think that
there are indeed bears in Illinois?

At this point
it’s hard to tell what exactly made the footprint, but with other
accounts of strange happenings and unusual howls and screeches in
Chatham, many residents are raising an eyebrow.

“I
definitely don’t think it was a hoax, and it was more than just a
coincidence. I think that people should just be a bit more vigilant
and careful, because you never know what you’re going to find out
there,” Patrick said. - sj-r

NOTE: The
Murphysboro Mud Monster is one of the more infamous Bigfoot-like
creatures reported in the state of Illinois...this time in the
southern part of the state. Lon

Around
midnight on June 25, 1973, ayoung couple was parked by a
desolate riverside for a romantic interlude when they came face to
face with a huge, wet, hairy, mud-slathered monstrosity with a
penchant for disturbing teenage lovers.

During two
harrowing weeks in the summer of 1973, the rural town of Murphysboro,
Illinois became the epicenter of a terrifying series of encounters
with a huge, albino beast, which would come to be known as the
“Murphysboro Mud Monster” or the “Big Muddy Monster.”

This
bizarre beast tormented the citizens of this small community for
approximately fourteen days before its reign of terror abruptly
ended, resulting in one of the strangest and, in some ways, most
frightening cases in the history of hairy hominid research.

The
first official encounter with this decidedly unhygienic beast
occurred at approximately midnight on the on June 25th, 1973. A
youthful couple, Randy Needham and Judy Johnson, who were parked at
the foot of 23rd Street, in Riverside Park, near the town’s
old boat ramp overlooking the Big Muddy River.

According
to their account, Johnson claimed that they were listening to the
radio, engaged in a debate about when they should leave and,
presumably, doing what couples are want to do, when they heard
a piercing roar (which Needham compared to an “eagle
shrieking into a microphone”) that seemed to emanate from the thick
underbrush not far from his car. Needham quickly snapped off the
radio and scanned the area, listening intently.

Suddenly, another
horrific shriek echoed through the night accompanied by a rattling of
the brushwood in front of them. Needham flicked on his headlights and
Johnson gasped as they both saw a huge, foul scented creature
lumbering toward them...a creature whose very existence would tax the
limits of their imaginations.

Needham wasted no time in
starting his car and accelerating away from the scene with his
frightened girlfriend. As the pair entered more civilized territory
they made a beeline for the Murphysboro Police Station.

Monsters
of Illinois: Mysterious Creatures in the Prairie State

The couple arrived at the station and made out what is
known as an “unknown creature” report, describing a
beast that looked like an “over-sized gorilla,” which
they estimated to be almost 8-feet tall, with matted, mud
streaked, white hair. Former patrolman, now retired Murphysboro
police Chief, Ron Manwaring, was still able to recite the facts of
this strange incident from memory almost three decades later:

“The
first report came in just before midnight on June 25. A
couple had been ‘parked’ near the boat dock on the
southwestern edge of Riverside Park, next to the woods.”

“The
two, who were not married, said they were in the car when
they heard a loud screaming sound in the wooded area and observed a
large creature approximately 7- feet tall. The creature appeared to
have light-colored hair matted with mud. The creature appeared to be
walking on two legs and was proceeding toward his car.”

Manwaring felt
that the couple’s account was lent credibility due to the fact they
risked exposing their alleged indiscretions...which would no doubt
bring them public ridicule and, even more alarmingly, Johnson’s
father’s wrath. They were so frightened by what they had seen by
the river: “There was no advantage for them to come up and report
this.”

While the
officers who took down Needham and Johnson’s statement were
understandably skeptical of the event, they dutifully sent out two
patrolmen, Meryl Lindsay and Jimmie Nash, to investigate their
report. Within minutes of the sighting the officers arrived at
the boat ramp in the Riverside Park area to inspect the
scene.

History,
Mystery, and Hauntings of Southern Illinois

Officer
Nash was the first to discover a plethora
of “peculiar”tracks, “approximately 10 to 12-inches
long and approximately three inches wide”, deeply impressed in the
mud by the riverbank. Nash claimed that as he bent over to inspect
the prints from a closer vantage point he was shocked to hear a
horrifyingly shrill screech nearby. Nash took off posthaste,
accidentally dropping his revolver in his panic.

The officer,
who admitted that he initially thought the story to be little more
than hogwash, described the hideous sound as: “The most
incredible shriek I’ve ever heard. It was in those bushes. It was
no bobcat or screech owl. We hightailed it out of there.”

Nash and
Lindsay quickly went back to the station to report their findings and
gather more men for a search party. The officers laterestimated that
whatever had made that sharp cry was no more than 300-feet away from
them.

Approximately two
hours later, at 2:00 am. on the 26th of June, officers Nash and
Lindsay returned to the scene accompanied by officer Bob Scott and
Needham. The quartet swiftly discovered another spate of tracks near
the river. As Lindsay ran back to the patrol car to retrieve a camera
the rest of the group intrepidly followed the prints along the bank.

Without
warning, the stillness of the black night was shattered by the same
horrible scream that Needham and Nash had heard earlier. Fear rapidly
usurped curiosity as the trio of men summarily abandoned their search
and raced back to the patrol car for safety.

Tales and
Trails of Illinois

After huddling
in the car for what must have felt like an eternity. No
doubt waiting for the beast to attack, the men managed to regain
their courage and continued their pursuit of this enigmatic monster
once more. This mini-posse worked until dawn trying to track down
the “splashing” sounds, which they described as being
like a large creature rushing through the knee-deep water in the
distance...to no avail.

As the sun
rose, the officers felt that this so-called “monster” would
evaporate with the rest of the night-shadows, never to be seen again,
but this presumably nocturnal fiend had a surprise in store for
them.

At approximately 10:30 pm. on the evening of June 26th,
5 year-old Christian Baril was playing in his backyard, which was
located relatively close to the Big Muddy River, attempting to catch
fireflies in the glass jar his mother had given him.

The
child frolicked about delightedly when he spied a colossal, white
shape looming up from behind the fence that separated his
yard from the neighbor’s property...the Ray family.

The terrified
Baril dropped his jar and raced inside, crying out:“Daddy, Daddy!
There’s a big ghost in the backyard!” The child’s father
was understandably dubious of his son’s story, that was, until, his
neighbors corroborated the tale.

This account of a
terrifying backyard encounter is uncannily similar to one that befell
another young Illinois boy named Greg Garrett just a few months
earlier on April 25th, 1973.

Garrett
claimed to have been attacked while playing in his backyard by a
truly bizarre, slimy, three-legged beast known as the 'Enfield
Horror'. Like Baril, Garrett immediately retreated to the relative
safety of his parent’s house.

While Baril
was sobbing in his father’s arms, teenager Cheryl Ray was sitting
on her darkened back porch next door with her young suitor, Randy
Creath. The pair claimed that they were talking and looking at the
stars when they heard a rustling in the bushes about 15-feet away
from the porch.

Assuming
that is was neighborhood kids come to spy on them; an enraged Ray
went inside to turn on the porch light, while Creath, the son of
a state trooper, now a minister at the First Baptish Church in
Sheffield, Iowa, leapt to his feet and opened the door. This
intention vanished the moment that the light came on revealing the
same appalling apparition that had terrified Baril just minutes
before — as well as Needham and Johnson the previous night. Ray
recounted the scene:

“Randy and I
were sitting in my parents’ breezeway when we heard something in
the woods. We both went down, but Randy was walking a little bit
ahead. Then he said ‘Come here,’ and there it was. We
stood there looking at it.”

Creath and Ray
stood frozen with shock as this filthy, white monstrosity seemed to
stare back at them. Creath recalled the moment vividly:

“The thing I
remember was the bulk of it, the shape, the human form, and the
stench of the river slime it apparently had on it. It was about eight
feet tall, and at least as stocky as NY football player. We were
within 15-feet of it, close enough to see the body, the texture of
the fur, long and hairy, like an English sheepdog.”

Ray also
described the beast, which she claimed bore inhuman features and
stood more erect than an ape:

“It was real tall, hairy. I
think it was white, but it was dirty, matted. It had a real bad odor.
It was really rank. I never smelled anything like it. It seemed like
an eternity we stood there, and then it just turned around and walked
off into the woods. We could hear it trampling through the woods.”

Creath claimed
that the “animal” stared at them for what felt like a long time,
although he later estimated that the incident lasted only about 30
seconds. Both agreed that the creature had “glowing red
eyes,” which Creath accredited to the glow of a distant
streetlight.

This description
of the eyes is significant if one is to assume that the Murphysboro
Mud Monster is actually a prototypical Bigfoot-like creature that
just happens to be albino. While pink eyes are a common trait in
animals lacking pigmentation, Ray would insist that this beast’s
eyes were actually “glowing” and were not reflecting light from
some other source.

After this
strange interaction, the couple claimed that the shaggy beast simply
turned and pushed through the shrubbery, thrashing its way back to
the nearby river.

Creath and Ray
testified that the creature they saw weighed at least 350-pounds,
stood about 7-feet tall. They also stated that it had
a “roundish” head and long, gorilla-like arms. Officers
Nash and Manwaring were swiftly dispatched to the scene, where they
noticed a powerful odor that quickly dissipated. They also found a
cluster of footprints where the creature had been lurking.

Following the
officer’s discovery, Chief Toby Berger immediately dispatched the
rest of his men to the scene then sent for an officer and trained dog
handler with the nearby Carbondale Police Department, a man named
Jerry Nellis.

Nellis was the
owner of a tough German Shepard named “Reb,” who had assisted the
Murphysboro police in the past as a search and rescue, attack dog
and, most pertinently, as a tracker.

The officers
discovered a trail of unidentified “black slime” that seemed to
lead directly from the Ray’s back porch to the river. Officer
Manwaring confirmed the existence of this still unknown material:

“I
saw this substance and smelled the smell myself.”

Almost
instantly, Reb picked up the scent of his prey and took off. The men
then followed the dog down the recently forged path of broken tree
limbs and trampled underbrush toward their bizarre quarry.

The dog
managed to track the monster through the dense forest and down a
steep embankment toward a small pond, but the brush became too thick
for it to continue. The officers began searching the area with
flashlights for clues as to where this creature might have escaped,
but in no time Reb picked up the scent again.

The determined dog
darted toward an abandoned barn on the Bullar property, which was
located just east of the Ray’s house and a little north of the
river, but once he got to the decaying door the usually courageous
canine began trembling and yelping with fear.

This mystified
both Nellis and the officers who had noted over the years that Reb
was the most relentless tracking dog in the county. Nellis attempted
to grab the dog by the scruff of his neck and thrust him through the
open door of the barn, but Reb just dropped to his belly and
scampered backwards, whimpering.

The usually
bold Reb’s terrified reaction to whatever lurked within the barn
was enough to convince Chief Berger to call in the“troops.”

He radioed for
help from neighboring police departments and within hours a dozen
patrol cars had responded to his call.

Unfortunately,
in the time that had elapsed between Reb’s fearful display the
arrival of backup, whatever it was that had hidden in the barn
managed to slip out through the back. Not long after, the search was
called off for the night and the disappointed officers returned to
their home bases.

But this would
not mark the end of the Murphysboro Mud Monster saga as sightings of
this mysterious man-beast were reported two more times during the
next week and a half. Berger claims that during this period he was
worried less about the monster and more about one of the 10,000
Murphysboro residents shooting another in one of the many armed
posses that seemed to spring up like wildfire.

The next
reported encounter with the beast occurred approximately 10 days
later after a traveling carnival set up camp in Riverside Park. The
carnival workers chose a pleasant glade near the river between the
boat ramp and the sewage treatment plant located below the Ray house.

At 2:00 am. on
July 7th, long after the carnival had closed up for the night, three
carnies, Otis Norris, Ray Adkerson and Wesley Lavender, where sitting
behind one of the carnival trucks discussing the day’s receipts
when they heard a series of whinnies coming from the Shetland ponies
that were tied to the bramble on the other side of the truck.

The men
quickly got up to see what the commotion was all about and were
shocked to find the usually docile ponies where in a tizzy with their
eyes rolling in terror, furiously tugging at their ropes in a
desperate bid to free themselves from their constraints. It wasn’t
long before the carnies would see what the frenzy was all about.

The men
maintained that they spied an 8-foot, 400 lbs. creature that seemed
to be “calmly” watching the ponies. The men decided not
to wait around to see what happened next and immediately ran for
help, claiming that the monster also ran in the opposite direction.

About an hour
later, one of the carnival workers called in to help deal with this
beast, Charles Kimbal, claimed that he saw the creature once again
staring at ponies with its head cocked to the side in what was
described as a “deeply curious” pose.

While this
would prove to be the last “eyewitness” report of the creature,
its reign of fear was not quite complete. Later that same night a
woman named Nedra Green asserted that she heard a screaming sound
coming from a shed on her rural farm. She chose to remain inside her
home rather than go out to investigate.

Berger’s
concerns for the townsfolk’s safety led to a request from the town
fathers to bring in “expert” help.

The man they chose for
the job was St. Louis insurance agent and serious researcher of
Sasquatch reports Harkan Sorkin. Sorkin led a group of five men,
including reporters from the Kansas City Star and a lawyer, into the
woods near Murphysboro in the fall of 1973, in an effort to track and
possibly capture the Murphysboro Mud Monster.

Sorkin claimed
that private groups had offered as much as $2.5 million for the
creature’s capture. With that in mind this small expedition came
armed with a stun gun with the capacity to take down a for a
500-pound animal, as well as chocolate and bananas, which Sorkin
stated they would use to pacify the beast.

They also carried
loaded shotguns, which they claimed would only be used if their
safety were threatened. Sorkin further claimed that they had local
zoos standing by and that arrangements had been made for a cage to be
flown in by helicopter should they get lucky and manage to imprison
the monster.

Needless to say, this mini-expedition met with
very little success. Sorkin asserted that they heard “a very
loud yell or guttural sound, between a roar and a bellow” and
saw huge footprints and found two-inch saplings pulled out of the
ground.

Of course, it
wasn’t long before the press got their talons into this tale of a
colossal, mud-caked critter. The local paper, The Southern
Illinoisan, ran a small story on the search, which was eventually
picked up by the New York Times.

Cryptozoologist
Loren Coleman investigated the sightings in the 1970s and came to the
conclusion that the Mud Monster was a Bigfoot-type creature,
stating: “I think it’s within the context of other reports
of a Bigfoot.”

Bigfoot! : The
True Story of Apes in America

Coleman also
felt that the Murphysboro Mud Monster represented a distinct type of
ape-like creature distinct from its west coast counterparts in that
they are known to be more aggressive:“There’s something very
unique about this eastern-midwestern Bigfoot. From the reports from
the Mud Monster it seemed to frighten people the way it didn’t in
the west.”

Over the next
three years there were sporadic reports throughout the area of
animals that resembled the Mud Monster. Perhaps the most intriguing
of these sightings occurred on January 26th, 1975, when four
truckers, all of whom were traveling separately, radioed in reports
of seeing a bizarre “bear-like” creature near the
Illinois 149 junction west of Murphysboro.

On July 7th,
1975, two Murphysboro men reported a sighting of a strange creature
that they believed may have been the Big Muddy Monster near a pond in
the Harrison community, north of Murphysboro. Needless to say these
isolated events in no way compared to the tremendous flap of
encounters that had plagued the community in the summer of ’73.

The case of
the Mud Monster is just one of two cases that remain unsolved in the
history of the Murphysboro Police Department. Police Chief Berger
puts it most succinctly when he said: “A lot of things in life
are unexplained, and this is another one. We don’t know what the
creature is, but we do believe what these people saw was
real.” - americanmonsters.com - unexplainable.net -
trueillinoishaunts.com

About Me

Apr 2017 - 4.1 Mil Pg Views, March 2013 - Posted my paper introducing CLOUD COSMOLOGY & NEUTRAL NEUTRINO rigorously described, September 2010 I am pleased to report that my essay titled A NEW METRIC WITH APPLICATIONS TO PHYSICS AND SOLVING CERTAIN HIGHER ORDERED DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS' has been published in Physics Essays(AIP) and appeared in their June 2010 quarterly. 40 years ago I took an honors degree in applied mathematics from the University of Waterloo. My interest was Relativity and my last year there saw me complete a 900 level course under Hanno Rund on his work in relativity,as well as differential geometry(pure math) and of course analysis. I continued researching new ideas and knowledge since that time and I have prepared a book for publication titled Paradigms Shift&. I maintain my blog as a day book and research tool to retain data and record impressions and interpretations on material read. Do join my blog and receive Four items of interest daily Monday through Saturday.